A rapping Spirit in the sixteenth century.

One reads in the Histoire de saint Martial, apostle of the Gauls and, notably, of Aquitaine and of the Limousin, by the Rev. Fr. Bonaventure de Saint-Amable, discalced Carmelite, 3rd part, p. 752:

“In the year 1518, in the month of December, in the house of Pierre Juge, a merchant in Limoges, a Spirit, for fifteen days, made a great noise, rapping on the doors, on the floorboards and on the flagstones, and moved the utensils from one place to another. Several religious went there to say Mass and to keep watch at night, with lighted tapers and holy water, without his having been willing to speak. A young man of sixteen years, native of Ussel, who served that merchant, confessed that the Spirit had molested him many times, at home and in various other places, adding that a kinsman of his, who had made him his heir, had died in the war and had appeared many times to several of his relatives and had struck his sister, who, in consequence, passed away three days later. The said merchant Juge having dismissed the young man, all this noise ceased.” Evidently the young man was an unconscious medium, of physical effects, such as there have always been. The knowledge of the laws that govern the relations of the visible world with the invisible world makes all these facts, supposedly marvelous, enter into the domain of natural laws.

Allan Kardec.

Paris. – Typ. of COSSON ET Ce, rue du Four-Saint-Germain, 43.

[1] [Histoire de St Martial, apôtre des Gaules, ou la Défense de son … — Google Books,] — Par le P. Bonaventure Saint-Amable — 1676.